Page 24 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

I told him four hours anyway.

Out the window, the cloud is a floor going all the way to the edge of the world with the sun coming flat across the top of it. My hip is up against the seat frame and going solid, as it does when I sit for more than half an hour. There’s a man beside me with his hands folded who hasn’t said anything since he put the notebook away.

Six years of this flight. Six years of 12A, Beau in 12C telling a story to nobody, a crossword puzzle, and landing.

“Do you fly a lot?” I say.

“No.”

“Ever get used to it?”

“I’ve been on eleven flights in nine years, and all of them were for work.” He turns his head. “I don’t like it. I’ve never told anyone that because there’s nobody to tell.”

That’s the first information he’s ever volunteered about himself.

I look at the cloud. He looks at the seat in front of him. Neither of us says anything else for two hours, and it’s the least alone I’ve been on an airplane in my life.

The visitors’ room in Nashville is small and old, the ceiling low over the far stalls. I’m on the table with my leg out when Marty comes at my hip with both thumbs.

“That’s tight.”

“It’s fine.”

“Kieran.” He leans in on it, and the joint answers all the way down to my knee. “That’s not fine. That’s a hip that’s been doing this a while.”

“It loosens up after ten minutes.”

He works it another two minutes. Twice more, he asks in different ways. I give him the same answer. Eventually he puts a pad on it and says he wants it logged. I tell him no. He shrugs because I have a no-trade clause, eleven wins since Christmas, and he’s a good man who’s learned what happens when he pushes me.

He goes.

The room is empty. There’s a rack of sticks, a bucket, and the sound of the ice crew somewhere through the wall.

Marek is in the corner by the door with his laptop open.

“It’s been locking up since November,” I say.

He stops.

“Every morning. It goes solid in the joint overnight and it takes about a minute to break it loose standing up. It comes back on the third or fourth day of a stretch of games and it’s worse after a flight. It’s not going away. It’s been eleven weeks, and it hasn’t had one better day.”

He doesn’t write anything down.

“Nobody in this organization knows that,” I say. “Marty’s guessing; Nils isn’t. If it goes on the log, it’ll reach the league injury report, then the guys who study those reports for a living. If I’m on that report, the club has to say something. The first thing they’ll say is that Sandoval is available.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because you asked me how I slept on the plane.”

He closes the laptop.

“You know what I do with that information,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Say it, then.”

“You write it down and give it to somebody.” I sit up on the table. Both feet hit the floor. The joint objects, but I stand anyway. “It’s the only information you’ve ever wanted from me. Sleep, injuries, which nights I play. I worked it out in the first week. It wasn’t hard.”